I first added the yeast to warm water dissolving with a fork and let it stay for about 5 minutes. Then to this I added the salt and olive oil and mixed all together. I then placed this in my mixer bowl and gradually added the flour while the mixer was running at low speed. I ran the mixer for about 7 minutes until the dough came together. I then placed the dough into a container and let it rise for about 1 hour and 30 minutes at room temperature (about 77 degrees F). After which I punched the dough and divided it into 250 gram balls (made 7 balls from this). I then left the balls to rise for another hour or so and started cooking the first pizza. My oven was about 750 degrees F (brick oven) and the pizza cooked for less than 2 minutes. Pizza came out ok with a crispy crust and chewy center. I had a slightly hard time forming the skin/dough of the pizza due to its wetness . I will try to compare this with 00 flour when my order arrives to see the difference in taste and structure of the pizza.

Thanks for posting your recipe. With your high-temperature oven, you have an advantage over those of us who have standard home ovens, even when using all-purpose flour to make Neapolitan style crusts. However, after converting your recipe to baker's percents, I am hard pressed to see how you can get good results with your formulation and instructions. Using the ingredient amounts you posted, I get the following for baker's percents:

The hydration percent is OK for what you want to do, but the yeast is far too high, even for a same day dough made within about 3 hours total, and your salt and oil levels are also on the high side. The large amount of salt may in part compensate for the high amount of yeast, but it is questionable whether the enzymes in the dough can act fast enough to release enough sugars from the starch to feed the yeast and also provide enough residual sugar in the dough at the time of baking to promote browning of the crust. I note this since your recipe does not call for any added sugar. I would think that your dough rose very fast, especially with the use of warm water, and that the crust received most of its coloration from the high oven temperature rather than from residual sugar. I would also think that the enzymes couldn't have acted fast enough to produce enough flavor-contributing byproducts of fermentation to give much flavor to the crust. The flavor may have come more from the carbonization of the crust during high-temperature baking.

It is possible to make a Neapolitan style pizza using all-purpose flour, although it won't be as good in my opinion as one using a good 00 flour. I understand that Chris Bianco of Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix has at some time used bread flour for his Neapolitan-style pizza dough, and Peter Reinhart, at page 107 of his book American Pie, has a recipe for Neapolitan-style pizza using all-purpose flour. Reinhart recommends as high a hydration percent as possible, even to the point of producing a "sticky" dough rather than a "tacky" dough. I estimate that his recipe calls for 65% hydration. All-purpose flour can tolerate this level of hydration, although it is on the high side and will most likely produce the sticky dough that Reinhart recommends. Reinhart also recommends overnight refrigeration of the dough before using, although he also suggests a room temperature rise in combination with a period of refrigeration for those who want to make a same-day dough. He also recommends using a small amount of oil to tenderize the dough, but this advice is more for the typical home pizza maker, not one with a high-temperature oven.

To modify your formulation, I would recommend cutting back your yeast to between 0.5-1% (5-10 grams), reduce your salt to 2.75% (27.5 grams), reduce the olive oil to 2-3% (20-30 grams), and use a 24 hour cold fermentation if possible. If cold fermentation is not possible, I would try several hours at room temperature and use cooler water. You will have to do some experimentation with these factors to see what combination produces the best results.

When I went to the local home bread making shop to purchase some high gluten flour, the very kind informative lady suggested that the higher the gluten level and I suppose the quality of that gluten also suggests the amount of water needs to be increased as the gluten sucks up the water big time - have you any thoughts on this yourself?

Personally, I do not want to work with a sticky dough, but I would like to work with a dough that is on edge of it just prior to becoming sticky - she suggested putting some oil on your hands to work it rather than extra flour.

Regards,

Wazza McG

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Fair Dinkum - you want more Pizza! Crikey ! I've run out out them prawny thingymebobs again!

What the very kind informative lady told you is correct. The higher the protein and gluten levels of a flour, the more water it can generally absorb. A simple way to test the concept is to take equal amounts by weight of cake flour, pastry flour, 00 flour, all-purpose flour, bread flour and high-gluten flour, and see how much water (by weight) each flour can absorb before getting sticky. I think that you will find that the cake flour, which has an absorption rate of about 53 +/- 2%, will take on the least water and that the high-gluten flour, such as our KASL high-gluten flour, which has an absorption rate of 63 +/- 2%, will take on the most water. The other flours will usually fall between these two numbers. To a certain extent, this analysis is meaningless as far as pizza making is concerned because flours such as cake flour and pastry flour cannot be used by themselves to make pizza dough. You have to add either vital wheat gluten (VWG) or combine these flours with other flours, such as all-purpose or bread flour, to get the protein and gluten levels high enough to be able to make pizza dough out of them.

It will be a bit difficult to squeeze 65% hydration into an all-purpose flour but it can be done with patience. I have found that adding the water slowly and intermittently, with small rest periods in between, enhances the likelihood of increasing the overall hydration level.

Protein quality is another important area, as you correctly noted. High protein quality and high protein content usually go hand in hand. But it is possible to get high protein content but with poor overall quality. For example, a drought can lead to a grain with high protein but of low quality and poor baking performance. Excessive rainfall, fertilization, and other factors can also affect protein quality. The job of millers is to manage the milling process and put together flours that are fairly consistent from lot to lot so that we, as consumers, don't detect wide differences in performance from bag to bag. King Arthur is one of the best at doing this, by imposing tight specifications on its suppliers.

Hi Wazza McG, A high Gluten flour with a hydration level between 60-63% when mixed well will not be sticky at all. I dont think you should have a problem handeling dough out of the mixer at these levels. I understand you were in a bread baking shop so the handeling process may be different. But when preparing a pizza on a peel, flour or corn meal is necessary to prevent the dough from sticking to the peel. This is something that i am sure you are aware of if using a peel. I do think a little oil on you're hands would work well with a very high hydration dough. Chiguy

I just recieved my shipment of 00 flour "Farina Dallari" made by Molini Industriali today. It came in 5 kilo bags. I will try my next batch of pizzas using this flour and post my results here. Protein content is about 10.2%. I got it for about $4.30 per 5 kilo bag. I was wondering what is the W factor that you were talking about in one of the threads that I saw? Anyway I tried the recipe that you suggested and it works fine even without cold fermentation (i.e. reduced yeast 30g, olive oil 30ml and salt 27.5g). Using all purpose flour, I had a room temp rise of about 2 hours and punched it down the another 2 hours rise (some about 4 hours after). The results were almost similar to the previous one i made. Although the dough was harder to form into a pizza than the one with more yeast. I will post pictures soon. I also have the another batch right now undergoing cold fermentation and will try it tomorrow (this one was made using 10 grams of yeast) and will update you on my results.

I am not familiar with the Farina Dallari brand of 00 flour. I did a Google search and wonder whether it is the one shown here: http://www.3e.com/cgi-bin/uncgi/marketclub?page=/items/org-00100.html&cart_id=66.249.66.147. If it is, and if the protein level is in fact 10.2%, that would make it a softer flour than say, the Caputo 00 flour, which has a protein content between 11.5-12.5%. I would guess that the Farina Dallari brand is more like the Bel Aria brand that is sold in the U.S.

You asked about the "W" factor. The W factor is the measure of the amount of force that it takes to inflate a bubble of dough (in a laboratory test) before it ruptures. Generally speaking, a dough made with a flour having a W factor above 200 will have a good tolerance for long fermentation. A flour with a higher W factor will also usually have a higher protein/gluten content, produce a higher rise in the dough, and have a higher absorption capacity than a flour with lower protein/gluten. If the 00 flour you will be using has a low W factor, you should be able to use a shorter fermentation time, and you should be able to use cold fermentation if you'd like (I have done this with the Bel Aria doughs). It may be difficult to get a 65% hydration using that flour since its rating would be more like 50+%.

I am not surprised that you had a more difficult time shaping the all-purpose dough with the ingredient levels I suggested, especially the amount of yeast. Using high levels of yeast, and especially with warm water, will accelerate the fermentation process. The dough will rise wonderfully but the quality of the finished crust will not be optimal. That is why I recommend longer fermentation times, and refrigeration, for a dough with small amounts of yeast. The gluten in the dough is softened over the long fermentation period by biochemical activity. Plus you will get more byproducts of fermentation that contribute to crust flavor and aroma.